Mismanagement of river herring warns of NCMFC’s commercial bias, veteran rec angler says

Goldsboro man fears poor fisheries management could send speckled trout the way of the river herring.

As commercial and recreational saltwater fishing interests duke out their positions online and at meetings of the legislature’s Committee on Marine Resources, Ray Brown of Goldsboro remains one of the most eloquent speakers on behalf of coastal resources.

Brown worries that the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission hasn’t learned from one of its most-egregious mistakes – allowing river herring to disappear – and may be on the road to repeating it with speckled trout.

“I’m a native of Colerain, a town in Bertie County, once known as the ‘Fresh Water Herring Capital of the World,’” Brown said. “I was an eyewitness to the greatest failure of fishery management ever to befall North Carolina.

“That collapse is the driving force within me to stay engaged in fishery issues. I pray I never see anything like that again.”

North Carolina’s sounds and tributary streams, such as the Roanoke, Chowan, Cashie, Middle and Eastmost rivers, once teemed with alewives and blueback herring (collectively called “river” herring).

Documents from 1914 show 999 pound nets – just in the Chowan and western Pamlico Sound – collected 20 million herring. Annual harvests in coastal waters from 1880 to 1970 averaged 12 million pounds, and that doesn’t include the ocean netters’ take of herring, for which even imprecise figures aren’t available.

After years of crushing pressure, the herring stock started a predictable crash dive, watched in alarm by Brown and many others, including biologists with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries. More reproducing fish were being taken out than could replenish their numbers. The biologists knew it, and they told commissioners that herring harvests needed to stop. The scientists were met with silence, because a handful of netters were making money netting herring.

With the stock collapse getting closer each year, the Commission set a 300,000-pound quota from the Chowan-Pamlico-Albemarle system for 2000 through 2005 (even though the total catch was about half that figure). In November 2003, provided with more evidence of an impending herring disaster, the Commission refused to stop the netting but dropped to a 100,000-pound “emergency-interim” quota. The agency finally instituted a total ban on river herring harvest in 2006.

Too late. The herring were gone. They have never returned.

Recreational anglers and groups now pleading with the legislature are afraid a similar scenario could develop for spotted seatrout, supporting a bill that would declare specks, red drum and striped bass as gamefish, prohibiting any commercial harvest.

Although specks are prolific breeders, there aren’t nearly as many as the pre-collapse herring population. The NCDMF has classified specks as overfished for the past 19 years, plus, the fish are susceptible to cold-water events that stun or kill them.

“During the last decade of commercial herring fishing, 17 commercial fishermen on average annually participated at a time when our biologists were begging for harvesting to stop,” Brown said. “But these 17 found the political allies to keep harvest open so (they) could split $90,000 per year.

“Today, the fishermen are out of business, and the herring are gone, perhaps forever. The thousands of North Carolina citizens who enjoyed herring runs have lost that experience for the economic gain of 17 people. Now that’s greedy.”

NCDMF statistics indicate that a very few commercial fishermen are making much money netting speckled trout on an annual basis, and that has Brown looking both forward and backward.

“Whether the 89 (commercial fishermen) will make their $2,000 or so per year going forward as long as the stocks hold up or the masses will find their angling experience in North Carolina year after year for generations yet to come is not within my power to decide,” Brown said.

“Only (the committee) can determine through legislation, if the herring story is an aberration, or if the future once again will show that the experience of the many will be forsaken for the dollars of the few.”

Follow the fight to protect North Carolina’s fisheries on the dedicated Game Fish Status page.

We encourage our users to email the members of the committee, demanding that gamefish status be given to red drum, speckled trout and stripers. Just click on the names of the committee members below and send them a short note:

• Harry Brown
• Don East
• Thom Goolsby
• Bill Rabon
• Tommy Tucker
• Jean Preston
• Stan White
• Darrell McCormick
• Dan Ingle
• Ruth Samuelson
• Danny McComas
• Bryan Holloway
• Pat McElraft
• Tim Spear
• Brent Jackson
• Tom Murry